Sunday, May 1, 2016
Yip Kai Chun has been invited to GeoAIR residency to participate in the project Tbilisi Chess Palace
 

Yip Kai Chun is an artist-curator born, bred and based in Hong Kong. His interest in the intersections of (local) culture, history, identity and the notion of home emerges from his personal experiences. With his art, he aims to unravel the taken-for-granted and neglected, re-create lost connections, and re-imagine alternatives. He persists in sincerity in his art.

Yip’s process-oriented practice blends documentation and narrative by drawing on theories and methodologies from multiple disciplines. Often, he initiates circumstances that interweave his everyday and personal experience with artistic research and creation. He is fascinated by documentation, employing sound, video, photography and found objects. He also creates installations that explore the artistic possibilities of spaces not normally reserved for art.
His curatorial practice mixes art forms and dissolves conventional boundaries - between art-making and curation, the traditional and the contemporary, art and other disciplines - to foster dialogue within art and without. 
Yip studied Critical Intermedia Laboratory (2003-06) and Cultural Studies (2006-08). He was awarded Emerging Artist Grant, Hong Kong Arts Development Council twice in 2011 and 2013. He is the winner of VT Open Call by VT Artsalon, Taipei (2016) and Open Call for Young Curators by Mur Nomade, Hong Kong (2015). His work ‘voice from the root, reclaiming’ received ‘Special Mention’ in Media Art Category, the 21st ifva (Incubator for Film & Visual Media in Asia) awards, Hong Kong (2016). 
 
For "The Tbilisi Chess Palace" project Yip Kai Chun has developed a Chess Palace Chess. The game is based on the current division and privatisation of Tbilisi Chess Palace. 

The Tbilisi Chess Palace and Alpine Club, opened in 1973, is a typical Soviet modernist architecture intended for public use. Currently, seven different parties, some of which unrelated to chess, share the building. Each party has altered the interior and exterior of the architecture for their own purposes, public access to the Chess Palace is largely restricted. The game represents the deterioration of Soviet modernist architecture and rapid privatisation and commercialisation, which are apparent issues in Tbilisi and other post-Soviet cities.

 
Yip Kai Chun's residency at GeoAIR is supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and the Arts Development Fund of the Home Affairs Bureau, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.